Get a Head Start on Holiday Cooking Today

The holidays are coming, and with it, the need to entertain guests and/or feed the kids while they are home from school and usually cooped up indoors due to colder weather in the Northern Hemipshere. The holidays hold enough time and financial pressure, without the constant wail of “Im’ hungry! What is there to eat?”

One of the best ways to handle the holidays and save money at the same time is through Make and Freeze recipes.  As the name suggests, you make the recipe and eat it, then freeze the leftovers. Or, you can batch cook, making a week or two of meals all at the same time, which you can then freeze for later use.

Make and freeze recipes made from scratch help ensure that you know exactly what is in the food you and your family are eating. If anyone in your house has food allergies, this is a must. It also saves a lot of money, because properly portioned out make and freeze meals cost pennies on the dollar compared to microwave meals from the supermarket or take away from your local restaurant or fast food joint.

Package up your food into TV dinners with the help of sturdy freezer containers. Color code the lids so that anyone who has allergies or a special diet, such as vegetarian or vegan, can always spot exactly what they can and can’t eat.  If you are working and the kids are home all day,  there is no need to worry about getting a hot meal on the table. You can rest secure knowing that there is a freezer full of food for the kids to choose from, heat and eat.

If you and the children and your spouse want to spend as much of the holidays together as possible without slaving in the kitchen, cooking make and freeze recipes now, when you are in the kitchen cooking anyway, can help you get well ahead of the game by the time the holidays ever roll around.

Get recipes ready now for holiday pot lucks, covered dish suppers, dessert or cookie swaps, and even gifts that you can make and bake, parcel up, and give as presents.

Do you have guests coming to stay? Feeding them three meals a day plus snacks can be hard work, and expensive too, especially if they want to eat out while there are there. Get organized now and you will be amazed at how easy it is to entertain them this year.

If you dread the holidays because you know how much cooking you are going to have to do, it’s time to end the pattern of slaving over a hot stove just to try to enjoy the holidays. Make and freeze recipes are easy enough to cook each night, and versatile enough to multiply 2 or three times so that you can parcel up and freeze the rest. Or, go shopping, unpack your groceries, roll up your sleeves, and make about a month of meals in a single day.

Packing your freezer with recipes made with the freshest ingredients means you will never have to waste food or eat lame leftovers again. Best of all, they can give you a great head start on your holiday cooking, making Thanksgiving and Christmas entertaining and socializing easier than ever. If you want a more stress-free holiday season, with better budgeting as you spread out the cost of food over 2 or 3 months instead of only a week, make and freeze recipes are the solution you’ve been looking for.

Further Reading

Make and Freeze Recipes: Great Foods You Can Cook, Freeze, and Use Quickly and Easily

More Make and Freeze Recipes: More Great Foods You Can Cook, Freeze and Use Quickly and Easily (Eat Better for Less Guides)

Even More Make and Freeze Recipes

Healthy Make Ahead and Freeze Muffins

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Making the Most of Seasonal Foods

The autumn is here, and with it nature’s bounty. All of the fresh fruits and vegetables that ripen in the fall are at their peak of freshness. Why not make the most of them with some great recipes. Eat some now, and freeze the rest?

Make ahead and freeze cooking can help you save time and money. You will waste a lot less food if your family stops doing the ‘leftover shuffle’, pushing last night’s delicious dish to the back in favor of something freshly cooked, or even worse, take away food.

Let’s face facts. We all love variety. Sadly, a lot of us are also carrying around a few extra pounds. Portion control and packaging up leftovers into ‘TV dinners’ is one way to get the range of foods we love and still stay slim. Serve with a salad and you have a complete meal for pennies on the dollar compared to takeaway.

Make and freeze recipes are also perfect if you have special diets to cater to. Color-code your container covers. Write on the lids or sides using freezer tape, and your picky eater or person will allergies can be sure that they are eating what they want and what’s safe for them.

Many people used to can or jar their produce to preserve it before it spoiled. Packing your freezer with recipes made with the freshest seasonal produce is even better, saving you time and money. Never again do you have to wonder what’s for dinner, and whether it will be delicious.

Further Reading

Make and Freeze Recipes: Great Foods You Can Cook, Freeze, and Use Quickly and Easily

More Make and Freeze Recipes: More Great Foods You Can Cook, Freeze and Use Quickly and Easily (Eat Better for Less Guides)

Even More Make and Freeze Recipes

Healthy Make Ahead and Freeze Muffins

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Fun and Easy Halloween Sheet Cake Ideas, Part 2

 

In the last section, we discussed how to make a fast and easy Tombstone cake. Now we are going to look at how to create one or more attractive pumpkin cakes to add to your holiday buffet spread or potluck.

Your round pans will be perfect for making a pumpkin face. You can then use the wedges left over from the tombstone cake to make stems for two pumpkin cakes by frosting them green and positioning them over the round cakes.  (If you have not made a tombstone cake already, not to worry. We will tell you what to do when it comes time to decorate and assemble the cake.)

For the pumpkin faces, once your round layer cakes are completely cool, you will be ready to frost. First dye your white frosting orange, or use ready-made orange frosting.  (We recommend trying to make your own natural food colorings rather than buying commercial products. There are many recipes online that can help.)

If you need to create a stem, cut off about an inch of one side of the cake and then cut it in half or into a stem shape and position it on top of the cake.  Frost it green and set aside until it is time to assemble the cake.

Frost the whole cake ‘face’ with your orange frosting, and then decide how you wish to create the features of the pumpkin face.

There are a number of options for creating the faces. Again, if you are a green mom, you might want to create these as naturally as possible. If you are calorie or sugar conscious, this will also help you select the right choice for your whole family and any guests you might be serving cake.

You can draw eyes, nose and mouth with frosting gel or make some very dark black frosting with red and blue drops of color and create triangles for the eyes and nose and some jagged ‘teeth’ for the mouth.

You can also make the facial features using a number of pieces of candy corn. Make two triangles pointing downwards for the eyes and one triangle pointing upwards for the nose by positioning the candy corn as needed.   The mouth can be as jagged and snaggle-toothed as you like, positioned in the center of the cake under the nose.

You can add the lines of the pumpkin down the cake in slightly curved lines parallel to each other like parentheses, starting on either side of the face, with the left-hand-side lines curving out to the left, and the right-hand side line curving out towards the right like this: ((*^*))

You can also use icing gel, sprinkles and so on to fill in the features. Don’t forget to color green the stems of the ‘pumpkins’ (your leftover cake wedges from the tombstone cake) using some green frosting or green sprinkles or colored green sugar.

These are quick and easy cake ideas that will feed a large number of people for gathering at a school, church hall or other community group . An attractive cake also works very well as the centerpiece for a Halloween buffet table.  Best of all, you can use any recipe you like, so you can be sure of how wholesome the ingredients are. You can even make your own buttercream frosting or a festive-colored cake glaze using natural ingredients, without a lot of fat and sugar or food coloring, in order to avoid gaining weight or feeding your family and friends too many unhealthy items.

If you are really in a hurry, you can resort to boxed mixes, pre-prepared frosting, and food color, but remember that one drop of color can go a long way and use it sparingly.

If you make a mistake frosting your cake, just scoop it off and start again.  If the worst comes to the worst, you can even cut off one part of the cake and start again or use it for cake pops and bake another one.

And no matter what it looks like, there is no such thing as a bad cake as long as you follow instructions for the recipe you are using or the mix you are making.  Don’t burn your cake/s, time everything carefully, and test it for doneness according to the package instructions.

 

Note to beginner bakers:

Your oven may vary in terms of temperature, so always check for doneness about 5 minutes before the lowest recommended time. For example, if it says Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, check its progress at the end of 25 minutes. Our oven is so good that if it says 350 for 30 minutes, it will be done to perfection in 30 minutes. 35 would be overdone.

We once had an oven that was 100 degrees cooler than it should have been and one that was 75 degrees hotter than it should have been. If you want to save a lot of money and calories by learning to make and decorate cakes yourself, it is a fun hobby the whole family will love, but you might want to invest in an inexpensive oven thermometer just to check your oven so all your cakes will come out great.

 

Further Reading:

Halloween Magic Even on a Budget: Halloween Activities, Costumes, Crafts and Recipes

Fast, Fun and Frugal Halloween: A Guide to Great Halloween Costumes, Recipes, Activities and Decorations

How to Save Money This Holiday Season

How to Create Great Holiday Decorations for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween and More

How To Create A Loving Thanksgiving Celebration for the Whole Family

Planning for and Preparing a Stress-Free Thanksgiving At Home

Easy Thanksgiving Recipes

A Vegetarian Christmas Season

Easy Christmas Recipes

Planning For and Preparing a Stress-Free Christmas At Home

Fast and Fun Christmas Recipes

Great Christmas Candy Recipes

How to Create a Loving Christmas Celebration for the Whole Family

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Fun and Easy Halloween Sheet Cake Ideas, Part 1

There are many way to make a homemade sheet cake into an attractive and festive one for Halloween. The first thing to consider is the shapes and size of the pans you have. Most of us will own the usual 9” x 13” baking pan and a couple of round cake pans to make a layer cake.

The next thing to consider is how many people you will need to feed  if you are having a party, or are contributing to a Halloween potluck or buffet.

In this series of articles, we will teach you how to make a fast and easy Tombstone Cake and a Pumpkin Cake.

 

Tombstone Cake

A 9” x 13” sized cake can serve at least 12 people, more if you cut into smaller slices rather than squares or rectangles. Make a tombstone cake by positioning the cake on a board that you can use to transport the cake.  Hold it so that the shorter edge of the cake is nearest you. With a sharp knife, cut off the top left corner of the cake, working from the center downward in a curve, to create the first curved edge of the top of the tombstone. Repeat with the right corner. Save the cake wedges for more yummy treats later.

Using pure white frosting, frost the cake. Using icing gel in black or blue, write on your tombstone. You can put the initials R.I.P for Rest in Peace to make it look like a gravestone. Or you can write a Halloween sentiment like “Happy Halloween” in ‘spooky’ looking or spidery letters. You can also add a cobweb to one corner of the tombstone, on the top or bottom, using the icing gel, complete with a small spider if you really want to get into the ‘spirit’ of Halloween.

You can also use some of the gel to outline fingers and nails for a hand coming up out of the grave on the bottom of the tombstone cake.  Coconut dyed green and some chocolate sprinkles will work well as ‘grass’ and ‘dirt’ for the bottom edge of the tombstone to add to the spooky effect of the hand coming out of the ground.

You can make the hand a little pink or even green with one drop of food coloring added to the white frosting. Create the frosting fingers by placing them in your desired area. Outline them with the gel. You can aim for a scary effect or a funny one. You might want to try the new Neon food colors from McCormick for a ghastly glow in the dark green. Just use one drop to start with. You can always add more if you have to, but it is impossible to remove it if your color ends up too dark.

In the next section of this article, we will look at how to make a fast and easy pumpkin face  cake.

Further Reading:

Halloween Magic Even on a Budget: Halloween Activities, Costumes, Crafts and Recipes

Fast, Fun and Frugal Halloween: A Guide to Great Halloween Costumes, Recipes, Activities and Decorations

How to Save Money This Holiday Season

How to Create Great Holiday Decorations for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween and More

How To Create A Loving Thanksgiving Celebration for the Whole Family

Planning for and Preparing a Stress-Free Thanksgiving At Home

Easy Thanksgiving Recipes

A Vegetarian Christmas Season

Easy Christmas Recipes

Planning For and Preparing a Stress-Free Christmas At Home

Fast and Fun Christmas Recipes

Great Christmas Candy Recipes

How to Create a Loving Christmas Celebration for the Whole Family

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How to Bake a Great Cake

If you’re getting ready to bake a cake that you plan to decorate for a special occasion, you will probably be worried about a couple of things.

The first will be how will it taste. If you have never tried the recipe before and are concerned about that, do a trial run of the cake a day or two before if you can in order to taste it. If your house is anything like ours, then there is never any need to worry about any dessert ever going to waste, no matter how bad it tastes or what it looks like.

Once you have tasted it, you can adjust the recipe to make it just the way you and your family like.

If it comes out very well, you might even want to decorate it for a special occasion. In this case, there are a couple of other concerns you will probably have at the back of your mind. One of them will be how to bake the cake so that it does not have a lot of big cracks in the top of it, which will look terrible and make it hard to frost.

You might also be worried about getting the cake out of the pan without damaging it. This will be particularly true of cakes that come in highly decorative pans, such as the lovely Williams-Sonoma ones. The patterns are lovely, but you will need to prepare the pan well if you want your cake to pop out without any problems and retain the pretty design.

Here are some of the best tips we can give to help you bake a great cake.

1-Follow the recipe EXACTLY the first time you make it. In this way you will have a benchmark for what it is supposed to look like and taste like and can then adjust it to taste in subsequent batches.

Always read the recipe first and measure out all your ingredients before starting. Things will go much easier if you have everything laid out in the right quantities. You will be much less likely to make mistakes like leaving out a key ingredient if everything is arranged before hand. You can also see what bowls are full and which are empty so you will not lose your place in the recipe or wonder if you added all the ingredients in the right order.

2-Preheat your oven to the correct temperature for at least 15 minutes. And if ever in doubt about the temperature of your oven, invest in an oven thermometer to see if your oven is too hot, too cold, or just right. We had one oven that was 75 degrees hotter and needed to compensation. The oven we have now is a Kenmore and perfect. If the recipe says 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, it will be done in 10 minutes. Take the time to bake to really get to know your oven to minimize baking disasters.

3-Prepare Your Pan Correctly

Some recipes will tell you to grease the pan. Others will tell you to grease and flour it. Really sticky cakes might make you grease and use parchment paper. Some pans, like springform pans, might need grease on the sides and a cut out circle of parchment on the bottom.

Follow instructions and grease well with shortening using either melted shortening or cooking oil. Avoid butter unless the recipe specifically calls for it, as it can blacken and burn. Coat the whole pan, paying particular attention to the join of the bottom of the pan to the sides.

If you have a very ornate pan, brush well, or consider using a liberal coating of low calorie cooking spray.

If you also need to flour the pan, take a few tablespoons of flour in your hand and sprinkle to coat the pan without it clumping. Shake the pan and tap the sides, moving the pan around in a circle until the flour has coated the grease. Dump any extra loose flour into the trash.

4-Try “Bake Even” Strips for a Flat Cake Top

There are two ways to get a beautiful cake with a nice flat top. The first is to simply turn the cake over and use the level bottom surface.

If you don’t wish to invert the cake, then purchase a Wilton “Bake Even” strip for the size of baking pan you plan to use. There are other brands, but we use Wilton and you can see what it looks like in the photo.
To bake a flat topped cake, soak the strips in water to help prevent burning, drying out and cracking of the cake top.

Once the strips are soaked, run your thumb and finger along the length of the strip, pressing lightly, to remove the excess water. You don’t need to wring them out, just to stop drips.

Once you have removed the excess water, fasten it around your pan and use the pin provided to secure the strip.

6-Don’t Over or Under Bake

When you place your cake in the oven, set your timer to the minimum time recommended and check it then. Don’t use the upper measurement and then wonder why the cake is cracked on top or overdone.

You can tell if your cake is ready in a couple of ways:

1-Insert a toothpick into the center of the cake. If the toothpick comes out clean, it’s done.

2-Gently press your finger on the center of the cake. If it jiggles or doesn’t spring back right away, it will need at least another few minutes.

7-Cool Your Cake According to the Instructions

Cool your cake according to the instructions in the recipe. Some will call for you to cool it in the pan, while others will want you to let it sit for a few minutes and then transfer it to a wire rack.

If it is a very sticky or sticky-topped cake like a pineapple upside-down cake, you will want to remove it from the pan when it is warm and peel off the paper sooner rather than later so it does not stick.

Check your recipe to see if the cake should be cooled in the pan, but generally speaking, you should take your cake out of the pan after it has cooled for about 20 minutes and place it on a wire rack with your top up and the bottom down on the rack. The rack will leave lines, so if you are going to invert the cake, do it before it cools.

If you are using good non-stick cookware or have greased and oiled the pan well the cake should pop out easily. If you find yourself having problems, run a butter knife gently around the edges of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Then place your rack on top of the cake and then flip everything over.

Gently lift the pan off the cake and allow the cake to cool on the cooling rack. A cooling rack provides air to the bottom of your cake, reducing moisture and allowing the cake to cool more quickly.

You can put wax paper between your cake and the rack if you want to limit ridges to the cake for any reason, but it will take longer to cool and will not dry out as much.

9-Cool the Cake Thoroughly Before Attempting to Frost

You must cool your cake completely before you decorate it, or else your frosting will start to melt and run. Depending on the size of your cake, it can take several hours to cool, so keep that in mind when planning your baking and decorating schedule. Sometimes it is easier to bake the cake the day or night before so you don’t need to worry.

For other cakes, adding a glaze while it is still warm might be required. Again, be sure to read the recipe through fully to be sure of the instructions.

10-Frosting Choices

You can opt for a glaze or powdered sugar to keep the cake simple.

These are good choices if you want people to appreciate the elegance of the shape of the cake, which has been molded in a special pan.

You can also opt for fondant that you roll out.

But butter cream is the most popular.

You can leave it white, or color it. (Though beware of the dangers of artificial food coloring.

You can make frosting roses on a frosting pin to decorate a plain cake.

You can put a small piece of wax paper on the frosting pin and make the rose, then take the paper and rose off and put them on a cookie sheet.

Freeze them for about 15 minutes for easier handling and placement. You can also make a batch in different colors and freeze them in a plastic container for future use. Then if you need any, take them out and pop them on top of the cake.

A frosting comb can help you create a smooth, even texture and special effects as well, like the popular and elegant basket weave effect.

The frosting should be room temperature to make it easy to work with. Start frosting the top of the cake, or the top of the bottom layer of a layer cake. Put the top of the cake on or continue frosting the single-layer cake by working the frosting evenly down the sides of the cake until it is all covered. Smooth with a knife or frosting comb. Add roses and other decorations as needed.

My favorite cake to make each year is my nephew’s William-Sonoma train cake for his birthday. We make a dozen train carriages, each with a different theme, candy decorations, and contents inside the cake cars. If I have time, I make train rails out of licorice and an entire rocky and forested landscape out of candy and cookies.

Use your imagination, and you will soon be able to bake and decorate with confidence.

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Microwave Your Way to More Free Time Part 2

HEAT UP YOUR CHOICES AND SAVINGS

Budget is a common word now a day, so every little bit of saving helps. Savings is just one of the many pluses of microwaving. It makes it possible for quick and painless trips to the always crowded super market. Not having to purchase multiple ingredients can help to make your wallet that much thicker.

In some cases the ready-made meals might not always be the best bet. Sometimes you might spend more on the meal opposed to buying individual ingredients. Careful planning on shopping day can help keep your budget in check when purchasing microwave meals.

There are also many options to choose from when wondering what to cook with your “high speed oven.” Full meals all packaged up with all the ingredients already mixed together ready to go. Who can beat that!

It becomes an even bigger help when you have children to feed. How often do you pre heat your oven for chicken nuggets for that afternoon snack? Microwave cooking can cut the cooking and waiting time in half, giving you more time to spend doing the things you and your family love to do.

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